Nothing in education is a guarantee but what we CAN say is that critical thinking has never been a part of K12 education. For any kind of formal training in critical thinking you have to go to college. That doesn't mean you can't learn critical thinking without college, you can, but for the formal training... college.


I agree that college graduates are increasingly finding no return on their investment. This is a trend that started long before Obama the Great and has more to do with the profit potential of private universities that churn out more graduates than the job market needs. If anything, Obama the Great made public college more accessible to more Americans but that has nothing to do with the value of the degrees being earned. In any case, I'm not sure how any of this relates to critical thinking. Whether or not a college degree translates into money has absolutely nothing to do with critical thinking. Indeed, most career paths don't even require critical thinking.


I doubt that. Last time I was in England I noticed that a LOT of these entry level jobs were taken by highly educated Europeans that couldn't find jobs to match their education level. The only difference is that these young Europeans didn't owe anything. Burdening students with enormous debt is a distinctly American tradition.


You never took liberal arts. I can tell. Liberal arts is the category of education that includes critical thinking and if you were thusly educated you would know that the formality is open-ended. In fact a lot of people have a hard time wrapping their heads around liberal arts because it's so abstract and lacks the mechanical rigor of "correct answers". So, if formal training in critical thinking stifles a persons ability to test and evaluate concepts it's because that person failed to understand what he was being taught.


So, this is a perfect example of how conclusions are reached without critical thinking. I'm very familiar with this argument and it seems you are simply subscribing to it. A critical thinker wouldn't subscribe so readily... he would ask more questions like, WHY are these conservatives being banned? The subscriber will probably think the answer is obvious because it's included in the subscription... "liberals don't want to allow conservative ideas." But the critical thinker would look beyond that...

...He would notice the complete absence of ANY policy on ANY campus that prohibits conservatives views or the right to present them in public speech.
...He would then notice that such presentations are canceled on a case-by-case basis.
...After questioning each case, he would begin to recognize a pattern...

I'm using Berkley as the exhibit here, since that school seems to be a focal point for this argument and I've already done the research. The pattern is really obvious once you see it. The ONLY time a presentation is denied is when the subject matter falls into a category of speech that is known to cause unrest AND the security that would keep students safe in such situations is unattainable. Ann Coulter's case is a perfect example... She scheduled a speech a few years ago at Berkley. The school knew her subject-matter had the potential to cause unrest and gave her some scheduling options where security was available. She came back and said she wanted a different day. The school, which outsources security, was not able to make it happen for the day Coulter requested. Most honest presenters would have continued to work with the school to find a date that works for them and for the school, but Coulter instead went to Fox and declared that Berkley denied her because they don't want her to speak. In other words, she was reinforcing the false premise that you apparently subscribe to. Everything else I have to say about that, such as her intention to sabotage the school is speculation but I think reasonable.



The privileged ones are... People like Princess Ivanka who has never spent a minute of her life in reality. Many other students work their way through college, like I did.


Again, lots of college students are working their way through college doing the same things those lesser educated Republicans are doing at the same age. So it's not a strong argument. I DO understand what you're trying to say here and I'm familiar with the sentiment. But it's mostly grudge.

I did college AND trade school and I have to say, the trade school was a better deal for me when it came to starting a career, but that's because, like I said, very few careers require critical thinking. Trade schools don't teach critical thinking, they teach what you need to know to follow procedures. My college paid off when I made the move from operations to engineering because while companies don't mind hiring trade school graduates to follow procedures they prefer college graduates to work on innovation projects.

So if we're still talking about critical thinking, your point about trade school education is entirely irrelevant. Like I said, most jobs don't require it. Truck drivers, electricians, construction workers, pretty much ALL the blue-collar work and a surprising portion of white-collar work, such as accounting, falls into the "follow procedures" category and I think trade schools ARE the best option for that. Critical thinking isn't critical until you get to innovator jobs that require out-of-the-box thinking and probably accounts for less than 10% of the job market.

I think for most people, the value of critical thinking is a matter of self-defense in a world where people are constantly being scammed or misled and that includes politics. Exploitive politicians like Trump get elected BECAUSE of a lack of critical thinking among the voters. When critical thinking is sparse, rhetoric and falsehoods win. As Jonathan Swift wrote more than 300 years ago, "Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it.” Why? Because critical thinking is less common than bandwagon-loyalty, that's why.

Finally, I want to expand on my first response... As I've said, You don't have to go to college to learn critical thinking. In fact, I think the BEST opportunity for developing a person's critical thinking is at home at a very early age. Sadly, many children are told what to do without giving them choices. THIS is what stifles critical thinking more than anything else. Among the families I know personally, I find the conservative households are the worst when it comes to allowing their children to explore concepts on their own. They are more often told what to do and what to think as part of the process the parents *think* is necessary to cultivate an upright citizen. It's unfortunate because children are most adaptable at an early age and when they are not raised to make their own decisions, they struggle more with the formal concepts of critical thinking when they get to college and THIS is why the point about which party has the more "educated" members is often misunderstood - it's not that college MAKES people better critical thinkers, it's that people who are already more capable of critical thought are more likely to succeed in college. So the score is more a symptom than a cause.

I can see the mistake. I also thought the OP was a double when I first looked at it. I noticed he hasn't been back since so there's a good chance he hasn't even realized the mistake. I thought his comment was more witty than insulting (or it would have been if the OP was a double) What is obvious is that he was directing his comment to the OP not debeda.

What I find hilarious about all this though is how you folks are demanding that he apologize after trashing him with insults that are sooo much worse.

"He is a pathetic excuse for a human being." - crazylibertarian

"He has to be the most miserable human on the planet." - tug484

Honestly, you sound like petulant children.

That's funny... the best thing you ever did in your career is end it. I tell ya what, if you couldn't handle common core then I would say you're right.


If they were getting great results on the STAR test then it was either because they had other teachers to help them or you were covering the material they needed to know.

I think it's too early to tell if Common Core will work or not. From what I can tell, the people who bitch about it don't really get it.

The traditional American education system didn't teach people to think. It only taught people to memorize things they've been told. As a result, we have generations of people who have been conditioned to subscribe without intellectual challenge.

On one hand, that makes us easy to herd like sheep. "4 x 4 = 16 BECAUSE my teacher said so" turns into "Tax cuts are good for us because Trump says so". I would even go so far as to say this fits in with the flock paradigm where Americans raised in the tradition of religious hierarchy are conditioned to follow on faith alone, which is why I think the Christian-Right, more than any other demographic, are inclined to follow without challenge.

But another consequence is the fact that America has become dependent on foreign innovators. Most of what we call American ingenuity actually comes from innovators that were imported from other places with better education systems. For some business leaders this is not such a bad deal. Stupid voters who can't innovate and smart innovators that can't vote. But others have decided it would be better to teach American kids to actually think.

For a lot of older Americans this is an understandable shock. Their poor education leaves them struggling with abstract concepts and they get frustrated with having to figure it out. If someone can just tell them what the answer is, they can memorize it. ;)

Common Core is an attempt to teach kids how to actually think so if no one is around to tell them what the product of 4 and 4 is, they can figure it out through their own logic.

Again, I don't know if Common Core will actually work, but at least I know the intention behind it and it's funny as hell to see simple minded people react to it.

You can't prove that because some of your "conservative" media channels lie through their teeth. LOL - See? We can play that game too.

It's not that hard to catch either... Republicans have come up with too many theories and accusations about why the popular vote was miscounted to take any of it seriously. The one thing all these theories prove is that Republicans can't stand the idea that they could be outvoted.

What part did you not understand?

I don't think World Citizen could be any clearer (or lucid. LOL) He is asking how we feel about raging as we do over superficial things like ideology while our fellow humans are suffering from real issues like starvation, warfare and disease.

My answer to that question is that some of us don't give a crap about our fellow humans and are more concerned about winning ideological arguments. The problem is that obsessions with ideological arguments can often result in real consequences. For instance, millions of people are on the verge of being inflicted with the consequence of climate change which has been allowed to develop largely because ideological differences in the policy machine that dictates our response to global warming.

Good point slatten. Mmmm. so I've changed my mind - I don't want equal representation now. (LOL - just kidding). Seriously, if I could have it my way, I would make every voter take a citizenship test first to eliminate the millions of knuckleheads that vote for party because they don't have the intelligence to vote for issues. Trump would not have even got past the primaries.

But that would be a tall order because the last thing those who own this country want is an educated democracy. The reason why these plutocrats favor the unfair advantages of the little states is because the little states are in general less educated and therefore more easily fooled. Asking the plutocracy for a vetting system to weed the dumbshits out of public decisions would be like asking Putin to give us Crimea.

I think the best thing we can do is give all citizens an equal chance to participate in public decisions and do what we can to educate ourselves and each other to increase the odds that decisions would be sound.

Thanks for posting that two-part transcript. BTW, if you're just copying what someone else wrote then you can always link to it. (saves room on the servers) ;)

I read the transcript... it's actually pretty good rhetoric. The facts are there for validation while at the same time developing a misleading context. This has always been the genius of the Heritage Foundation and similar think tanks. I mention this because it ties in directly to the point being made in England's speech, that a democracy based on a popular vote is subject to tyranny by the majority.

I can't argue with that because it's a fact... but that doesn't mean other facts aren't being omitted and that's the basis of this kind of rhetoric. What is notably absent from this particular spin is the distinction between LAW and WILL.

In other words, if you make it a LAW that every citizen gets an equal vote, it will be left to the WILL of the people to keep it real. If you make it a LAW that citizens get unequal votes then WILL (for many) becomes irrelevant.

Trent England is implying that we must suppress popular votes as a matter of LAW. There is no way anyone can say that doesn't interfere with free will. In fact for all this worry about tyranny of the majority, the suggested solution is just another form of tyranny... tyranny of the elite.

And who gets to decide who the elite will be? Republicans? Rural states?

At least if you make the LAW equal, ALL American citizens will have a chance to exercise their will. Trust me, I have grave concerns that many of us, maybe even the majority will screw it up. We Americans are by far the most politically uneducated people in the developed world, so my expectations are not high. But at least the LAW would give us the freedom to TRY and make good decisions and if we don't, we only have ourselves to blame.

In my opinion, equal law suites the American tradition better. The "land of the free, home of the brave" means we value freedom and are willing to endure all the threats and dangers that come with it. Giving everyone an equal vote = freedom. Enduring the threat of "mob rule" is the price we should be willing to pay for it. The same can be said of any of our freedoms... the threat of hate speech, the threat of mass shootings, these are all prices we pay for our freedoms which is exactly why the land of the free is home to the brave.

If your scared of majority rule, then you should live in China where the LAW makes majority rule impossible.

Trent England left ALL of this out of course because he (along with the Heritage Foundation) wants us to submit to LAWS that block our freedom of self-determination.

I believe it was 3/5ths.


How did they with representatives? I'm not sure what you mean.


I don't have a "revision". I was describing the facts. If you're referring to my suggestion that every citizen be counted equally, the idea is to change the distribution of representatives. I was not suggesting that we remove the EC (as I said, the EC makes no difference). Nor did I suggest we switch to a popular vote (because that would require a Constitutional Amendment, which would not be needed if representation returned to what the founders intended before Congress broke it in 1913.)

If you're problem is with my suggestion that we give each citizen an equal vote, then I'm sorry but I think that's the way it should be and so did the founders of this republic.

Let me ask you this... Do you think it's fair that the 40 million Americans in California are suppressed? Because they are. I've done the math... one voter in Wyoming has the power of 5 voters in California. So your concern about people in small states not having a voice is exactly the reality of the larger states today, which actually makes you a hypocrite... You oppose the popular vote because you think it might give an unfair advantage to larger states so you defend the status quo because it gives an unfair advantage to rural states which isn't fair either, nor is it what the founders intended despite popular misinformation.

To this day, no one on your side has ever answered this. Gee, I wonder why.


Yes, a popular vote is ONE FORM of democracy... People have been calling it "mob rule" for centuries, most notably in situations where tyrannical forces are trying to break down democracy by weakening the faith citizens have in their own determination. This was the case during the fascist and Soviet takeovers from almost 100 years ago and with fascism back on the rise it looks like it's happening in America right now. And yet... another example of "mob rule" is the popular vote that Americans participate in every two years to elect our representatives. Where's outrage there bro?


No... 49% will be unhappy because they didn't win. There's no reason to assume the next vote won't be different. I understand that in many rural communities it's all about loyalty and that's fine, but most Americans live in places where they actually think about the issues and their minds DO change. Maybe you should give American citizens a little more credit instead of assuming they are all mindless sheep.

A lot of people who voted for Trump in 2016 won't be voting for him in 2020.

I got that from the debt clock for California. https://www.usdebtclock.org/state-debt-clocks/state-of-california-debt-clock.html So I'm not pulling it out of my ass... I read your link and it starts off talking about the contradictions in the estimates... (My years in business intelligence has educated me pretty well on how easy it is to come up with multiple perspectives on one data set, depending on the story you want to tell. It's kind of a sport). So my question is... how do we know the number YOU found is accurate?

Also, notice the authors have pointed out that they are *projecting* future values... (sneaky). So, in case you didn't know this... that 2.8 trillion is NOT the actual debt - it's a projection of what the debt MIGHT be in the future.

Look, you can labor the numbers all you want if you think that's going to prove some point. I think the bigger point is that debt by itself is a meaningless assessment of an economy. Heck the U.S. has the largest debt in the world... According to your shallow logic that would make America the shittiest place on earth. Is it? Or is the U.S. (like California) a massive economy that can handle massive debts?

Seriously, if this is all you got... there's no argument and I already know you hate California for whatever reason. So we're done, right?

OK, well - first of all states have NEVER been sovereign entities, they have ALWAYS been subordinate to the republic which is why federal representation is an issue in the first place.

That being said, yes, the tradition is that states should be as close to sovereign as possible and as an anti-federalist, I have a true appreciation for that. I was just curious what your reasoning is. I agree that sharing a representative between states conflicts with the autonomy of the state, but so does the entire federal government, so I'm not seeing a convincing argument here.

The other point about states is that they are not always homogeneous either. Sometimes people can be at odds with each other within in a single state. It seems a lot of people don't realize this but California is incredibly conflicted and so is Texas. So again, your argument seems arbitrary.

But that's fine - let's just say for argument's sake that no state should share a representative. This leaves us with the math problem that led me to the suggestion in the first place.

If Wyoming with a population of 577,737 people gets 1 representative California with a population of 40 million would need 69 representatives (14 more than they already have) to provide each voter the same representation. That's just one, currently underrepresented state. Obviously, we would need a much larger House of Representatives. So we could do that too, but if we want to stay close to the 435 seats we currently have in the House, red states are going to need to start sharing.

It's one or the other - I don't care which. But continuing to allow a small minority of Americans to dominate the vast majority is undemocratic at the very least.

I dunno, let's have a look at some REAL numbers...

California debt = $471 billion
California population = 40 million
Debt per capita = $11,000

N. Dakota Debt = $8 billion
N. Dakota population = 775,070
Debt per capita = $11,000

So the impact on the individual is about the same. Wanna go back and look for a different argument?


First of all, if red states are so "responsible", why are they are so dependant on subsidies from blue states? https://wallethub.com/edu/states-most-least-dependent-on-the-federal-government/2700/

Secondly, I'm curious as to why you want to pursue this argument. I thought you folks were done with "debt concerns" as soon as Trump started running up the debt up at a far greater rate than Obama ever did. The argument doesn't suit your side anymore. But hey... since you're here, let me ask you something... With all the strongest economies in the world also producing the greatest debts in the world... in fact, with the biggest national debt being that of the U.S., I wonder how your out-of-context "logic" arrives at the conclusion that debt alone is enough to call a government worse off.

Finally, the reason why Californians enjoy better health coverage isn't because they spend more money on it but because California didn't allow companies to monopolize the insurance industry like they did in a lot of red states, which makes California's insurance industry more competitive so the market-driven ACA works better.


I guess the difference between us is that when I read all those financial periodicals (which I do) I don't simply subscribe to what is being said. I actually put things in context. If you read like you say you do, (which I find hard to believe) then you would notice how economists are constantly at odds with each other. Financial journalists are almost as subjective as political commentators.

That being said... Yes, I've read plenty of articles about the financial woes of California and yet California remains the 5th strongest economy in the world. Maybe you need to read some difference sources to get a bigger picture and maybe understand that debt by itself doesn't say much.

Always nice pointing out the obvious to people who claim to be economically educated. ;)

The "Christians" that you are referring to are very similar to the "Muslims" that sponsor terrorism. Both groups are right-wing (exclusive nature), politically charged and use religion as an excuse. And yes, many of those "Christians" do sponsor terrorism, via Zionist Israel.

I use quotes because neither real Christians nor real Muslims would involve themselves in terrorism or any of the undue intolerance that is so abundant on the right. There's no way in hell a real Christian would support what Trump is doing.

Why?

I'm not so sure about your numbers but I understand what you're saying. You think power should represent states not people. I'm guessing your a collective-type rather than an individualist. An individualist would count the people, not the states.


Dude, I have understood that retarded argument for years and I'm still not convinced that one county with 5 million people should get less representation than two counties sharing 10 people, 6 dogs and a bunch of frogs and crickets.


Well, obviously you don't know why we have an Electoral College so your kinda calling the kettle black here and your refusal to recognize the individual speaks volumes about your politics. If we went with the popular vote, every single citizen in every state, no matter how small would get one vote. I know for a fact there are gay people in rural America who might not vote the way his neighbor does and here's another fact... there are more Republicans in California than any other state. The only reason why California is always blue is BECAUSE of the EC. If we went with a popular vote, California would be purple. There's a LOT of farmers in California too that stand a very good chance of voting with the people in Kansas.

You're problem is that you don't want to recognize Americans as individuals.